Keyboard shortcuts and the ellipsis character

Oct 14, '08 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: kirkmc

When adding a keyboard shortcut to System Preferences (for a menu item for a given application), you sometimes need to add an ellipsis (…) at the end of a menu item's name. A previous hint mentions the need to use the Character Palette to generate this character (or press Option-; on a US keyboard).

Today, I was assigning a keyboard shortcut to an application's menu item, and I kind of forgot to enter the actual ellipsis character, and instead typed three periods. Interestingly, the shortcut worked. I don't know when this was changed (I have written a couple of articles in the past few years about keyboard shortcuts, and always found the need to type the ellipsis character), but it is certainly recent. This saves time and makes it much easier to enter a keyboard shortcut.

While I'm on the subject, I also noticed that the shortcut was active immediately; I didn't need to quit and relaunch the application I set it for. This, too, is a recent change.

[robg adds: The immediate activation of new keyboard shortcuts is a 10.5 addition; I'm not sure about when the ellipsis behavior changed.]

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